How do you deal with a bad captain?

[NoQuarter79]

Hahah, Randy. We have no harsh or negative feelings towards him or the event, it happened last year. I was just curious about what others would do in this situation. I'm not looking to be told that we were right or wrong, just wondering what others would do in a similar situation. It had been on my mind, but I didn't want to make it look like we were unappreciative and felt entitled to something that we didn't deserve.

[boatman61]

One of the things 'crew' often don't grasp in the early days.. its not 9-5.. its 24/7.. full on if times dictate.. no union rules, no democratic votes..
And.. its his boat.. 2 months to get to Beaufort.. can't have been all bad else you'da jumped sooner to my mind.. maybe its just down to you guys (3) are great short term.. but with couples + 1.. someone will start to feel ignored.. the owner fells ganged up against..
Not saying your right or wrong.. just that crewing is not just getting on and off a boat like many seem to think..

[s/v Beth]

Dear NoQuarter, I think you missed out on an opportunity. The BEST captain I ever sailed with was 80 years old, a smugger of conch, and didn't like me and told me so almost every day of our passage. He was supposed to be teaching us (we were paying for the opportunity) and he spent most of his time below sleeping (during the day while we were sailing) He sailed us into a storm on the Gulf Stream, into the Bermuda triangle, and in and throughout reefs that made our hair stand on end in a vary deep draft boat. And the whole time he carried on how we were a bunch of lame no good landlubbers (the entire crew was experienced sailors with their own boats). It was great!
We learned things like sailing smoothy in storms.
Identifying rocks by the changes in swells/waves over them.
MOB at night
and the list goes on.
So you are going to judge this guy by the way he dumps his poo offshore (legally) and that his bilge has oil in it? And that he didn't give you a spoon? Perhaps you should just sail your San Juan for a while. BTW- he cursed me when I left too, for sighting a USCG cutter when he had conch on board
I don't know if my boat, which I have put over 100k in the last 6 years, would pass your muster.

[Mike OReilly]

It is hard to know from your descriptions whether you were actually treated poorly NoQuarter79. We only have your side of the story, and as we know it takes two sides to really screw something up.

That said, I will concur that sexism is not uncommon in the sailing and cruising world -- at least in my experience. As a cruising couple who pretty much shares all duties we occasionally feel the subtle, and not so subtle, slings & arrows of sexism. And I will say it mostly comes from older sailors (both male and female). It's not unique to the sailing and cruising of course. I do think it is mostly a generational thing that is getting better, but you will still hear the "admiral and captain" terms thrown around all too often.

Actually, your story reminds me of the experience relayed to me by some friends. They are well-experience sailing couple who went south to help some "friends" move their boat to the Bahamas. They too jumped ship after suffering a couple of weeks of abuse, much of it aimed at the woman who is clearly a better sailor than this supposed "friend" of theirs would ever be.

There's no way we can know the truth of what actually happened, but if you truly felt abused, then you were right to leave.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by NoQuarter79

Carsten, I respect that you and your wife take equal responsibility for the boat that you share. That is how my partner and I see things. I haven't pulled up the anchor on our boat yet (and wasn't given the chance on the boat we crewed on) but I want to.

NoQuarter - you're going to find that the sailing world is rather male dominated. Females who sail and want to be respected have to have a thick skin and give as good as they get.

That's unfortunate because a lot of women get turned off on sailing before they truly get started, simply due the male domination.

Other women give up and become "fender benders", meaning they let the man sail the boat and let their husband tell them what to do.

When we started sailing, my wife and I made a deal. We would take all sailing and related courses together so we were equally theoretically proficient and we would split the skipper duties 50/50, meaning if I was skipper on the 1st day and docked/undocked and called shots at sea, then she was skipper the second day and did all that while I was crew.

It worked out well, my wife is a Yachtmaster Ocean and can sail boats easily along with the best of men. She services our engine and goes up the mast just as I do. She's better at meteorology than I am and I'm probably better at sail trim (ok - I AM better at sail trim).

Building that team and building her confidence etc took 10 years.

If you want to become an accomplished sailor - now is the time to have a heart to heart discussion with your husband/boyfriend. Because if you don't get him on board - you won't become one.

And if the anchor is too heavy for you - well that isn't a problem. Spend some time figuring out how you could rig a winch to get the anchor up - try on a calm day to prove to yourself you can and then let your SO do it.

I have a fair bit more upper body strength than my wife and we don't fight that. Why should we? We let the person best suited for job do it.

But my wife has figured out how she would raise our 30 kilo anchor by hand if she had to.

Good læuck with your sailing career - let me know if I can help you

[monte]

gee so the skipper was busy sorting out a night entry to a possibly difficult channel and at the same time cooking noodles for the crew who were not really assigned any particular tasks at the time and then the crew asks the skipper to get them a fork. I can imagine what I would be thinking as the skipper and it would probably have to be censored on a public forum...

[Randyonr3]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

Dear NoQuarter, I think you missed out on an opportunity. The BEST captain I ever sailed with was 80 years old, a smugger of conch, and didn't like me and told me so almost every day of our passage. He was supposed to be teaching us (we were paying for the opportunity) and he spent most of his time below sleeping (during the day while we were sailing) He sailed us into a storm on the Gulf Stream, into the Bermuda triangle, and in and throughout reefs that made our hair stand on end in a vary deep draft boat. And the whole time he carried on how we were a bunch of lame no good landlubbers (the entire crew was experienced sailors with their own boats). It was great!
We learned things like sailing smoothy in storms.
Identifying rocks by the changes in swells/waves over them.
MOB at night
and the list goes on.
So you are going to judge this guy by the way he dumps his poo offshore (legally) and that his bilge has oil in it? And that he didn't give you a spoon? Perhaps you should just sail your San Juan for a while. BTW- he cursed me when I left too, for sighting a USCG cutter when he had conch on board
I don't know if my boat, which I have put over 100k in the last 6 years, would pass your muster.

I love it !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[NoQuarter79]

Originally Posted by monte

gee so the skipper was busy sorting out a night entry to a possibly difficult channel and at the same time cooking noodles for the crew who were not really assigned any particular tasks at the time and then the crew asks the skipper to get them a fork. I can imagine what I would be thinking as the skipper and it would probably have to be censored on a public forum...

I didn't ask him for a fork. I went into the cabin to grab one myself, but I asked him before I got the fork. When I get yelled at for wanting a fork, that's going to upset me a bit. I am not trying to judge him. I never once said he was a terrible person for doing what he did. I just thought that bilge and head dumping were ILLEGAL, and I care about the water that I am sailing on. I did all the logging, also. He made the noodles that night, but we did most of the cooking on board. I'm not complaining that we had to do these things, but we did a lot. We worked a lot. We didn't expect it to be a 9-5 job. We got into sailing because we DON'T want to work 9-5 jobs. We were looking forward to working long and hard days/nights. He told us he was not in a rush, but rushed us every time we were on the water. He contradicted himself a lot which was pretty confusing to us. When we would do something he had told us to do before, he would yell at us for doing it wrong. I would dump a tiny amount of the coffee I had left over into the water every morning, and the last time I did it, he yelled at me and told me that it was illegal to dump my coffee into the water, but he's dumping his holding tank in the water. You see the contradiction there, right?

[darylat8750]

Just because you were nervous about conditions you had not experienced does not mean he was a bad skipper. If he had time to explain how he was keeping track of where he was you may have learned something. On the other hand he may have been too busy to be an instructor at that time. I agree that you should get your own fork. And you should heat the water for the noodles.....

[monte]

sorry I thought the thread title was kind of judgmental.
FYI you can learn about the regulations governing marine pollution and what is and isn't allowed here
IMO | International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)
There will be similar available online for inland waterways to cover your area.
Bilges may or may not have been clean apart from saltwater ingress. It sounds like you didn't ask so you don't know. Holding tank may or may not have been emptied as per regulations, again, you didn't ask so don't know. Yes throwing a coffee overboard may have been technically illegal. Again, ask and you will know.Same with the ship vessel, ask why he was the give way vessel, ask why he thought he was the stand on vessel. So the point is, ask, discuss, if you have a problem then discuss it with the skipper or crew you have the problem with. If you continue to avoid discussing issues, they don't go away, especially on a boat!

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by NoQuarter79

I didn't ask him for a fork. I went into the cabin to grab one myself, but I asked him before I got the fork. When I get yelled at for wanting a fork, that's going to upset me a bit. I am not trying to judge him. I never once said he was a terrible person for doing what he did. I just thought that bilge and head dumping were ILLEGAL, and I care about the water that I am sailing on. I did all the logging, also. He made the noodles that night, but we did most of the cooking on board. I'm not complaining that we had to do these things, but we did a lot. We worked a lot. We didn't expect it to be a 9-5 job. We got into sailing because we DON'T want to work 9-5 jobs. We were looking forward to working long and hard days/nights. He told us he was not in a rush, but rushed us every time we were on the water. He contradicted himself a lot which was pretty confusing to us. When we would do something he had told us to do before, he would yell at us for doing it wrong. I would dump a tiny amount of the coffee I had left over into the water every morning, and the last time I did it, he yelled at me and told me that it was illegal to dump my coffee into the water, but he's dumping his holding tank in the water. You see the contradiction there, right?

He's not Italian is he..??

[Wrong]

Boy oh boy.

There really are good reasons to sail alone.

[NoQuarter79]

I see what you are saying. I can't say that we are professionals at knowing what and where we can or can't dump, but the mandatory plaque that is in boats of particular size tells me the basics.

This has nothing to do with sailing, but I have a tattoo of the fleur-de-lis, and when we were discussing it, he told me that symbol was created by the founder of Boy Scouts, which a simple Google search will easily tell you otherwise.

And no, I don't think he was Italian. He was making Ramen Noodles.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by NoQuarter79

I didn't ask him for a fork. I went into the cabin to grab one myself, but I asked him before I got the fork. ................You see the contradiction there, right?

I was prepared to type a message that disagreed with the "man above all else" attitude that has appeared here (perhaps with some reason).

But, I was particularly taken with this admittedly HEAVILY edited version of your last post.

Please read the first sentence, then the second. What exactly does that mean. You didn't but you did?!? I'm flummoxed. If I read it right, after rereading it ten times, you didn't ask, went and got it but asked first before you got it? My head is spinning.

Then at the end you mention contradiction.

OK, I'm deliberately exaggerating, but your posts seem to reflect the "contradiction" theme you yourself just expressed.

Perhaps your communication skills could be improved. Based on what you wrote, so could his.

You spent a lot of time on the boat, then left in a huff, both yours and his. I have trouble understanding how you could be on the boat for so long to begin with.

The best crew I have are ones who ask questions. And take initiative. And communicate.

That story about the ship really confused me. You guys sail, right? Why ask about moving in the channel with a ship bearing down on you? Your husband had the helm and all he had to do was gently turn the wheel and move out of the way; if the skipper insisted that you keep in the way of the ship, I'd have said: "You take the helm, skipper, 'cuz this is plain wrong."

I agree with you that there is no reason people should be rude to each other.

I also have a great deal of difficulty following your stories and finding a way to get my head around supporting your actions as YOU have stated them.

It appears that your repeated posts are searching for verification your actions, but I find it hard to do so because of "the stories within the stories" you've been telling.

I wish you luck in your sailing careers, sorry it started out this way.

[NoQuarter79]

I have been told my lack of details is an issue, and I am working on it. I tried for at least ten minutes to eat the noodles without a utensil. I went in the cabin essentially to ask for permission to use a fork. We never asked him to do anything for us.

We honestly just tried to put up with it. We wanted to finish the trip. To complete a trip from Florida to New York would have been a great achievement for us as beginners. We had to plan accordingly, and try to find a way to get back home after we jumped. We chose Beaufort, because we had friends in the area that were willing to help us out. If it hadn't been that, then we would have got off in the Bay where our boat is, but we couldn't tolerate it anymore. Sometimes now I wish we would have put up with him, and finished the trip. But we do have dignity, and we'd like to maintain that as well.